Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/33576 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 1704
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We use data from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the impact of obesity on wages in 9 European countries, ranging from Ireland to Spain. We find that the common impact of obesity on wages is negative and statistically significant, independently of gender. Given the nature of European labor markets, however, we believe that a common impact is overly restrictive. When we allow this impact to vary across countries, we find a negative relationship between the BMI and wages in the countries of the European olive belt and a positive relationship in the countries of the beer belt. We speculate that such difference could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI and individual (unobserved) productivity.
Subjects: 
wages
body mass index
Europe
JEL: 
I12
J3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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